Wednesday, April 17, 2013

19 Weeks, We're Getting There!

Today I am officially 19 weeks along. Yay! One more week until the halfway mark, five more weeks until viability, and more weeks than I care to write until the babe himself is here. But the point is, we're getting there!

In the past nine days, I have had a significant improvement. I still am not gaining weight (total weight loss of 10kg/22lbs), but I am also not losing. One day I tried to reduce one dose of zofran slightly, and that didn't go too well. Heartburn is increasing, but so is my teeny tiny little pregnant belly. My belly is slightly larger than it was with L.H., so I'm taking that as a good sign.

I can eat more overall (around 1500 calories a day now, yay!), and I can also eat a larger variety of foods. The past couple of days protein has been staying in the best, so that's what I'm eating. I'm not going to go into details of specific foods, in case an HG sufferer is reading this...no need to cause you any more issues than you're already having!

My big issue right now, which of course makes all other issues worse, is that I am having an incredibly difficult time sleeping at night and I have no clue why or how to improve the situation. I fall asleep just fine and sleep really well for around three hours before waking up and, for the most part, failing to fall asleep again. As you can imagine, this makes all of the bodily aches and pains, the nausea, and my general mood and ability to cope much worse.

We're still taking it one day at a time, but now I have hope (which is a much bigger thing than it sounds like, to anyone to has never been through this). I still spend a lot of time fantasizing about the birth and planning different scenarios for how it can go down, but I also plan some more short-term things, like maybe this afternoon I'll go to the grocery store across the street to pick up three foods I think I can eat. I can now walk into the store without automatically vomiting, so we're really making progress.

My improvement this time came several weeks earlier than it did last time, and it is also a much more marked improvement than last time. Of course, until I start managing to put on a little weight and hopefully manage to reduce my zofran by at least a little, I won't feel quite like I've halfway beat HG. But in the meantime, I'm doing my best and fighting as hard as I can to bring this little life into the world.

Anatomy scan coming up soon (we wound up skipping the first one this time because I couldn't physically get over to the doctor's office to pick up the referral). My last u/s showed a healthy baby who measured about a week ahead, so apparently whatever it is that I'm doing is working for the baby, even if it's not working for me. Hopefully the good news about this wriggly little creature will keep pouring in.

I hope that all fellow sufferers out there are doing okay, and that even if you don't wind up with such a wonderful improvement like I have this time, that you at least have your fair share of good days.